Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

160 Ulla-Britta Broman-Kananen
of the new era were the eleven opera premieres given by both the Finnish
and New Theatre’s companies during the season 1876-1877, a number that
might be difficult to pull off in Helsinki even today.
The Christiania Theatre’s opera episode, 1874–1877
In Christiania the national poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson contacted the Swedish
director Ludvig Josephson in the early 1870s and asked him to become
the director of the Norwegian theatre. Josephson agreed, but only if he
could begin in 1873. Bjørnson himself had been the director at Christiania
Theatre in 1856, and his first aim had been to “clear out” the Danish actors
from the Christiania Theatre stage and replace them with Norwegians
(Josephson 1898, p. 13). Nevertheless, Bjørnson was now responsible for
inviting a “Swedish foreigner” to Christiania, something that seems to have
given him second thoughts. Or at least so Josephson thought; he believed
Bjørnson to be behind the demonstrations that confronted him on his arrival
at the Christiania Theatre in 1873 (Josephson 1898, pp. 11–13).
For Josephson, opera was vitally important to a theatre, and so, almost
immediately after settling down, he began to assemble an opera company
among his Swedish friends. 6 He was aware of the hopes cherished by the
theatre Board members for opera performances sung in Norwegian by Norwegian
singers. But the reality was that there were not enough of them to
realise this dream, as the talented Norwegian singers were already attached
to foreign opera houses (Josephson, 1898). The Norwegian soprano Olefine
Moe (1850–1933) would have been a good choice, but she was already engaged
at the Stockholm opera. Josephson did his best to meet the demands
of the Board (or so he presents the situation in his unpublished memoirs,
“Ideal och verklighet” 7 ) as well as in his book Ett och annat om Henrik Ibsen
och Christiania (1898) about Ibsen and his time in Christiania. There is no
6 Josephson also negotiated with the Finnish opera singer Emmy Achté (1850–1924),
who had been engaged at the Finnish Theatre’s lyrical department since its foundation.
He persuaded Achté to come to Christiania, and for a while, he and the director of the
Finnish Theatre, Kaarlo Bergbom, outbid each other. In the end Achté stayed with
the Finnish company. The source for this competition is the correspondence between
Josephson and Donald Bonnevie, who lived in Christiania and was engaged to Emmy
Strömer-Achté’s sister Sofie Strömer. Bonnevie acted as a representative for the then
unmarried Emmy Strömer during these negotiations (see Josephson’s letter collection
at the National Library of Sweden, hereafter NLS, Kungliga Biblioteket).
7 Josephson’s fifteen volumes of memoirs, unpublished, handwritten, and undated, are
preserved at the NLS.